A signal to the sideline followed a coin flip and a series of handshakes.

Bradford won the coin toss, opting to defer to its opponent in exchange for receiving the ball to start the second half. The Owls then turned to Abbie Nuzzo.

Nuzzo serves as the team’s placekicker, handling kickoffs and extra points. It’s a position she’s held for two years now after succeeding her brother, Caleb, Bradford’s kicker for four seasons before Abbie took over varsity duties.

While teammates, fans and her parents have now gotten used to watching Abbie in a helmet and shoulder pads, it wasn’t long ago that Nuzzo became the first female to score a point for the Owl football team.

The Nuzzo family will long remember that record-setting extra point on Caleb’s senior night in 2019. What people didn’t see on that night at Parkway Field, however, were the challenges they overcame to get there.

Abbie’s initial interest in kicking a football stemmed from her brother.

Caleb Nuzzo competed in the NFL Punt, Pass and Kick (PPK) program when he and Abbie were children. His sister enjoyed tagging along and practicing alongside him, though shying away from competing … at first.

“My parents eventually talked me into competing just for fun,” Abbie said, “because why not see what happens. I ended up making it through a couple rounds and not doing that bad, so that was something my brother and I did together for two or three years.”

When he got to high school, Caleb landed the Bradford varsity kicking job.

Soon after, Abbie’s interest in kicking increased, and she began accompanying him while he practiced. She hadn’t thought about actually kicking competitively, however, until catching a glimpse of practice on an August afternoon.

“It was their first day of double sessions and I had just gotten done with my second soccer session,” she said. “I had to go inside to get my parents to give me a ride home and we stayed for a few minutes just to watch my brother kick. He was doing great. Then the JV kickers came out.”

Abbie watched the remainder of the Owls’ kicking candidates struggle.

“I was like, hey, I can do that.”

With encouragement from her parents, the coaching staff was notified of Abbie’s intrigue and a tryout was arranged the following day.

“The first thing we did was kick extra points,” Abbie said. “It was me and two other guys, and I think we’d each do three. I kicked my first three and made all three.”

When they had finished, Abbie had made 14-of-15 point after touchdown (PAT) attempts.

She returned to the team’s second session later in the evening and replicated the feat. The junior varsity kicking job was her’s.

Before the JV team had played its first game, however, Abbie was called on to attempt a PAT in a varsity game. She missed.

She spent the rest of the season kicking on JV while Caleb, then a junior, did so for the varsity team. The duo filled their respective roles the following season, as well, until the Owls’ season finale against Karns City.

“We played Karns City on my senior night,” Caleb said. “I wanted nothing more than to see her do it before I left.”

Caleb, also the starting quarterback, connected with Dalton Dixon for a 35-yard touchdown in the fourth quarter. Abbie came on to attempt the PAT, but missed.

She had converted multiple extra points in JV games, but had missed the only two varsity attempts it appeared she would have before her brother graduated. Then, with less than two minutes remaining and Bradford trailing by five scores, Caleb found Austen Davis for a 30-yard TD.

“I told Coach (Jeff) Puglio that I wanted Abbie to kick this last one,” Caleb said.

She did, and as the ball sailed between the uprights, Caleb sprinted onto the field with his arm raised and a pointer finger aimed at the sky.

“It was just so cool hearing all the fans scream my name,” Abbie said. “When Caleb ran out on the field and gave me the biggest hug ever, it was one of the best feelings.”

Caleb remembers the moment well.

“I don’t even know how to explain it,” he said. “There are so many emotions that come to mind when I try to remember everything that happened. It was just an overcoming of joy and kind of like an ‘I told you so’ that she was more than capable of doing it.”

Abbie went on to convert 10 extra points her junior season, and has converted five through eight games this year. She doubles as a defensive midfielder for the Lady Owls soccer team, with whom she has won three consecutive District 9 championships.

She has lettered in four varsity sports at BAHS — soccer, football, swimming and track and field. However, as the Nuzzos learned when Abbie was born, her ability to play sports and succeed in other often-overlooked aspects of life were always in question.

Abbie has albinism — an inherited disorder that results in little or no production of the pigment melanin.

This impacts her eyesight, as well. The first time Abbie’s parents took her to an eye specialist, as a toddler, her vision was measured at 20/200 — legally blind.

“When you have albinism, you lack pigment,” her father, Jason Nuzzo, said. “She has blue eyes, but she doesn’t have any pigment in the back of her eyes like we do.”

This makes it difficult for her to process images.

Vision issues associated with albinism cannot be fixed by surgery or corrective lenses. The Nuzzos knew that improving Abbie’s eyesight would be an uphill battle, but wanted to prevent her vision from impacting her life.

Driving, seeing the chalk board at school and reading a textbook would be obstacles. Most of all, however, the Nuzzos wanted Abbie to be an athlete.

She got into soccer and softball as a child — the latter of which became increasingly difficult as she got older. When softball and travel soccer began to overlap, Abbie gravitated toward the latter.

As she aged and her interest in sports and social life spiked, Abbie crushed any doubts her parents had over whether her vision would hold her back. What had once seemed like impossible tasks for someone born with her vision were now commonplace.

Now a senior, she drives herself to school, athletic practices and beyond. And she hasn’t just become an athlete like her parents have hoped — she’s amassed a lengthy list of athletic and academic accomplishments along the way.

While lettering in each of her four sports, she’s played in the Corporate Cup Soccer Showcase twice already and was crowned District 9 Class AAA champion in javelin, pole vault and triple jump this past spring. At that track and field meet, she won the James Manners Award for most valuable participant in the field events.

She’s also a three-time D9 medal winner in swimming, a member of the National Honor Society and distinguished honor roll recipient at BAHS.

“We knew she was going to have her struggles, and we weren’t going to give her a free pass,” Jason said. “We weren’t going to let her cut corners, and she never has. This condition is a part of who she is, but it isn’t who she is.”

Admittedly, fall seasons have become busy for Abbie — she once played a soccer game in Salamanca, N.Y., at 5 p.m. before sprinting back to Bradford for a 7 p.m. kickoff. She enjoys what she does, however, and even recorded a tackle on a kick return during a JV game this season.

“It’s just cool to show people that just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean I can’t do it,” she said. “It’s been fun.”

Puglio complimented Abbie’s reliability, stressing the importance of consistency in the kicking game.

“It wasn’t about the history, but that she was competing and won that job,” Puglio said. “Really special for her, special for Bradford sports and I’d hopefully like to see more of that. Maybe as she graduates we can find someone else who wants to try it.”

The Owls will travel to Karns City tonight, where Abbie will kick off the game if the coin flip allows. Despite the great success she’s already had at BAHS, she has one more goal for her athletic career — to become the first girl to play in the Big 30 All-Star Charities Classic football game.

“We have never told her that she couldn’t do anything in life as far as her career,” said Lori Nuzzo, Abbie’s mother. “With playing football, it just shows you can’t tell her that she can’t do something.”

Abbie received many hugs the night she scored the first point by a female in Bradford football history. But none were bigger, or more heartfelt, than the one from her big brother.

“I had to play the entire next defensive possession trying not to cry,” Caleb recalled. “Just the feeling of being super proud. It was just cool because that was my little sister.”